About 8.5 million of the 11-plus million unauthorized immigrants living in the US are in the workforce, accounting for about 5 percent of all workers. Almost none of them want to be unauthorized—they either have no way to attain legal status, or the pathway to legal status is so onerous that they believe they are better off remaining unauthorized.

In a testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, immigration expert Madeline Zavodny will explore two crucial aspects of understanding and addressing illegal immigration—why people become unauthorized immigrants and how future guest worker programs can curb the influx undocumented aliens.

America’s Hispanics could be a national asset in the decades to come, but how much of an asset depends on whether they can advance economically and be assimilated as the Ellis Islanders were a century ago.